| All hugs gratefully accepted... |
[Jun. 30th, 2008|11:35 pm] |
Well, here I am on the train to Guildford from Reading, the last time I'll ever be forced to make this trip (excluding regular visiting, of course). My laptop is obviously one of the last things to go, along with a suitcase, sleeping bag, bag from the Society for Neuroscience 2007conference (oops, found it at the last minute), and a plastic bag with my dressing gown and a towel in it.
Awaiting for me in Guildford is a room packed to the brim with things that I moved across on Saturday, and which will require some thoughtful Tower-of-Hanoi-esque rearranging in order to let me manage to sleep tonight. My new room is smaller than my old one, and it definitely shows: I'll need some cunning rearrangement and a variety of vertical storage furniture if I ever want to see my floor.
So, anyway, this post is primarily to commemorate the following major event in my life:
![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) doctor_frank in Reading: September 1998 to July 2008.
doctor_frank in Guildford: July 2008 - ?
For the packing/moving/cleaning, I'd booked Thursday, Friday and today (Monday) off. In a way, I wish I'd booked Tuesday off too so that I could have a bit of a relax and sort my stuff out but, as usual, I didn't think of that in advance and just took what was strictly necessary.
As a result, for the last 5 days (excluding some of Saturday when I was moving) I have been helping clean the house, which has been enormously tiring. I have also been introduced to the wonder that is the Rug Doctor who, while sounding vaguely like a specialist in intimate parasites, is actually a fantastic invention for cleaning carpets. You fill it up with what seems like all the water and dangerous chemicals in the world, and then drag it across your carpet whilst it makes deafening sounds that are a cross between a hoover and a pneumatic drill. Then, when you're about halfway through the room, you're forced to refill it with *another* 9 litres of water and chemicals, a feat which is completely impossible to achieve with a bucket without spilling a good proportion of it on the floor. Fortunately, you can then hoover up the spillage, so it's a bit of a circle of life thing, really. It does do a hell of a job, though - with a little more horsepower it would probably start sucking in time.
The Rug Doctor went back yesterday, however, (I miss him already) so today has mainly been rehoovering, cleaning white goods, the upper bathroom and getting rid of wall stains. My finger nails are still white from the stuff on the anti-bacterial wipes I've been using all day, and I'm pretty sure that I've gone through enough jay cloths to entirely repaper the Millenium Dome in blue and white.
For the record, I cleaned a couple of fridges and a freezer today so thoroughly that you get snow-blind by looking at them. My achievement may well have been surpassed by Hellie, though, who brought our oven to a sparkling shine inside and out. The Sistine Chapel somehow pales in comparison.
With any luck, our landlord will now return our deposit. However, Mr. [Censored] has been known to remember the past with a distinctly rosey glow, such as referring to the carpet in the halls as "new", when in fact the previous tenants had been using them for the previous couple of years.
"Wait, wasn't this hallway carved out of gold when you moved in? And what happened to the display of Faberge Eggs?"
Annoyingly, I'm not sure if I still have the pictures that I originally took prior to moving in: there's a possibility that they were on the memory card that was stolen when we were burgled (along with a picture of Lucy's arse and a set of me dressed up for the Rocky Horror Show - I'd like to think that those chavs needed therapy afterwards). They may be on my almost-completely-dead desktop somewhere, but I'll need to have a hunt around. |
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